The Gramercy at Metropolitan Park

Project Overview

The Gramercy at Metropolitan Park, located in Pentagon City east of the Fashion Centre and Pentagon Row, provides 399 apartment living units along with premium amenity and retail spaces. The 485,000 square foot building integrates two (2) nine-story wings and one (1) six-story wing with an 18-story core tower.

The building exterior, designed by Robert A. Stearn in conjunction with WDG Architecture, is entirely clad with masonry components, incorporating brick, architectural concrete masonry and cast stone elements. Over 630,000 Norwegian size brick (2-3/4” x 12” nominal) were installed, using a pre-blend of three (3) earth tone colors in conjunction with a red sand finish field brick. Brick features on the project include jack arches and arched entries, recessed brick panels throughout, and multi-directional inlay patterned walls adjacent to the penthouse pool deck.

Over 18,500 pieces of cast stone are intermixed with the brick over the entire façade, including water table elements, multiple feature and accent bands, surrounds, sills and caps, as well as feature ornamental elements (e.g. fountain, entry bases and arches, and medallions). The unit balcony and terrace parapet walls were finished with earth tone ground face concrete masonry units. The building design has step backs and terraces at multiple floors, which created several access and logistic challenges for our field forces. A combination of FRACO mast climbing scaffold, heavy duty swing scaffold and traditional tube scaffold systems were implemented to meet these challenges.

Calvert Masonry’s scope also included the installation of Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) ornaments and cladding on the project, which involved connection detailing, subframing and connections including welding, and cut to fit installation. The ornamental GFRC features consist of eight (8) feet tall obelisks, column capitals, window accent panels, and terrace column/beam claddings, all which complement the surrounding cast stone and brick elements.